Carlos Beltran At Bat

The Cards in the World Series are pretty much all that I am thinking about these days. I almost jokingly told my boss today that I might be calling in sick tomorrow, because of tonight’s game. I’m glad that I didn’t do that, because depending on how things turnout tonight, I might actually feel physically ill on Thursday. I don’t know how other people do it. I’m speaking of regular sports nuts here. I would be an emotional wreck, if I had to do this fan boy shtick on a daily basis. The only saving grace is that I have plenty of company on this rollercoaster ride of postseason baseball. In fact, it is the exceptions that standout in this epidemic of Redbird fever. Those few, those pathetic few, those brother Saint Louisans, who shed not a tear at the prospect of a Cardinals loss, they seem so vile that not even a Cards win tonight shall gentle their condition. You see what I mean? I feel like some sort of delirium has overtaken me.

I did get into a wee little bit of trouble at work today. Every day, after three, I need to complete my timecard for that day. I had just done that when I skipped over to Fox Sports and checked out an article about tonight’s game. A company generated warning popped-up, scolding me for doing this at work. The webmasters routinely do this sort of crap during March Madness, wiping out whole swaths of the Internet, but doing this during the World Series was a first for me. Maybe it was a totally automatically generated message, triggered by an equally automatic detected rise in particular type of Internet traffic, but I suspect a bit of headquarters pique or maybe even jealousy. No self-respecting Saint Louis manager would ever care even one wit, certainly not mine.

Tonight is a do or die night for Saint Louis. If we don’t win tonight there will be no tomorrow, as apoplectic Boston prognosticators have been yelling since Monday’s Red Sox win. Riffing off their excitement, you could say that tonight’s little game and it is only a game, is a battle of good versus evil, of civilization versus the barbarians, of the sainted Cardinals versus those dumb bearded Bostonians. A scruffier bunch of ball players you could not find. They have parlayed their display of a secondary sexual characteristic into what passes for a team mantra, “Fear the Beard”. This facial haired cadre is led by “full caveman” Mike Napoli as his fellow teammate described him. Then you have Jonny Gomes who knows how to use a razor, because he has shaved his head. After his home run fellow teammates took to tugging on his beard dwarf style. In a league of his own though is Clay Buchholz, who the women at work are willing to testify is a serial killer. Do we really want these unkempt Sox as world champions? I think not.